The Adventures of InvisiCat and the Noble Lobster

It was purple-red, and a little bulging. It had a white splint taped across it. It greeted Katrina at the door from its perch on Calley's face.

He didn't want to talk about it.

"Want me to take your bag?" Calley offered, his voice a little nasal.

Behind her desk, Lisa looked up to offer a brief welcoming nod to the fourteen year old, then went back to her work. Today, she seemed to be re-filing filled files. Calley couldn't help but think she'd smiled at him more these past few days than she had in years. He tried not to be suspicious, but sometimes, the nose knows.

Down the Sanctuary's villainous hidden stairs and inside the door next to Isabel's room, a lobster greeted them both from his hastily set up tank on the floor. His rubber banded claws were raised in love, Calley was sure.

He didn't want to talk about that, either.

Next to the tank was a borrowed sleeping bag; there were fresh sheets on the actual bed, where Kat would be sleeping. Ms. Dumonde's stern look had been very clear on the subject of sharing. He wasn't quite sure why, which had lead to a sterner look. Seriously, though: she was Kat. And he would have only been in cat for—sternest look had made him swallow any and all protests.

"So," he snuffled, "I think we need to raid the cafeteria, terrify the populace with Cerberotaur, and plot. Maybe watch a movie. Any preference on the order?"

No local pun intended, of course.

>> “Your nose looks very impressive, by the way. But probably you should have DocProf look at it, or Slate. Or... doesn't the Sanctuary have a healer?”

Yeah, those first two options. No. Slate was Slate, and the DocProf… had been getting the wrong impression about Calley lately, based upon similarly acquired injuries. Ahem. Given that over half of the population of the United States was female, it just made sense that the fairer sex would be over-represented in his medical record. Yes.

"The Sanctuary has a unicorn, I think--but I guess he set up his own clinic, and is only 'on call'. The nurses are the ones who did this." He tapped the nose splint. A poor, poor move. Oww. And again, with feeling: OWW.

The lobster rose up to tap his legs against the glass, his claw-waving escalating further as Katrina returned his greeting.

"I'm still working on a name. 'Angry' comes to mind. Maybe 'Souvenir.'" Calley bounced on the bed, just a bit. That's what beds were for. "Any suggestions?"

Kat's other suggestion involved skipping to plotting. This was a sign that she was growing up right.

>> “Did you have something particular in mind?”

Grin, grin, oww it hurt to grin. Without further ado, the Italian teenager dragged a stack of pilfered Mansion books out from under the bed. (Under the bed being the appropriate place to keep pilfered anything, of course.) Myths and Legends of Japan, Here Be Dragons, and a half-dozen other books on folktales and monsters joined them on the bedspread. Cthulhu wiggled wrathfully on the cover of one of them; an aughisky dripped seaweed onto a black moor from another.

"Having observed that the Mansion's curriculum is lacking in certain vital preparatory courses, as demonstrated at Christmas," he intoned with the proper degree of stuffiness, "I have procured us proper nightmare fodder."

Their own powers could be quite well suited to nightmare fodder.

He pulled out a stack of paper, too, and proudly held up his notes so far: a surprisingly recognizable pencil drawing of the Headless Horseman. Complete with carefully scrawled annotations:

Horse -> me!
Horseman -> Kat, or InvisiKat + headless ghosting Ghost?
Pumpkin -> real? (how often do candles need changing? would it stay lit at a gallop?)

Target date: Oct 31 2010

>> "...'Souvenir' is going to make people ask what he is a souvenir of. That would be an alright name if you don't mind people asking."

"Come to think of it," Calley said, refraining from rubbing his nose after a last minute hand-shoved-in-pocket intervention, "I've already got enough souvenirs." Implied curiosity: elegantly avoided.

"A star named 'claws', huh?" Calley cast a critical eye on the tank. The lobster was trying to turn around: all the better to continue threatening them. It was a pretty hard trick for a two foot lobster to do in a three-by-two tank. Fish tanks, by the way, were surprisingly expensive. Would a kiddy pool work better? It was spring. Those would be on the market, soon. "If you remember, let me know." Calley may or may not have had as much interest in his newly acquired lobster as he'd once had in a certain Rottweiler. On the bright side: it wasn't a faux pas to eat his newest pet.

Kat took to his sketch more swimmingly than a noble nine-pound lobster to a mere fifty gallon aquarium.

"Me thinks Ghost will need an invisible head. I've seen her turn herself ghosty before, but not invisi-ghosty. We could technically do this without her, too, but... she's Ghost." This was a clear point of merit, in and of itself. He expected Katrina's full understanding in the matter.

The stylized fox received much attention from the multi-shifter. "That's cool," he decided. "Though I have no clue how those tails are supposed to work. Nine-pronged spine? That can't be healthy." Thus spoke the chimera in him, with a slight shudder. So many nerve ends converging. Such room for excruciating screw ups. "It would be better if they were in a row, instead of a fan. Like this." He poked at the picture's back a few times.

>> "It would be funny if we could convince someone they had fallen into a pokémon game for a day. See?"

Calley grinningly approved of Paralobster. "That would be awesome. We could do it easy, hard, or tournament style--B.Y.O.P."

He drew over a new piece of paper, stuck a book under it for support, and started a quick stick figure doodle, complete with circled numbers.

1) Easy.
Mansion newb + wardrobe w/o back + pre-programmed danger room

2) Hard.
Illusions + chimeras + other abilities + unsuspecting person about to be elevated to the status of Trainer (would DocProf be willing to play Prof Oak?)

3) Awesome.
Bring your own Pokemon. Tournament on the Mansion lawn!

Calley paused from his hard labors. "You and me could make Pokemon with our powers, easy, and I bet that triangle guy could make Porygon." He snerked. "Emerald with a dye job and a rubber tail could be Vaporeon."

One of these ideas was going to happen. This was now a fact of Calley's existence. And now they knew what they'd be doing until Halloween.

When could they start, indeed.

They had the posters done before dinner. One copy was daringly placed in the heart of the Order's supply territory, on the same run in which they brazenly pilfered their dinner. Later, clutching their ill-gotten soft serve ice cream cones, they (mostly Katrina) talked Lisa into letting them use the Sanctuary's copier. It's color copier. (Katrina was good.) This greatly increased their poster productivity. In short order, before their cones were even gone, they had a respectable stack of posters. They divvied it in half: Kat would get the Mansion and the Mansionly area, Calley would take care of the Sanctuary area.

Movies were then pilfered, and rec room couches equipped with mounds of blankets and pillows. Random other residents were dragged in, and made to share in popcorn. Movies turned to Apples to Apples, Apples to Apples turned to taking turns changing into PJs in the bathroom. Then came good nights, and sleep.

Then came troubles the likes of which not even Katrina's mother would fathom. Calley woke up the next morning, and stretched his claws towards the ceiling.

Clack clack--

clack?

>> “Huah! You are an impressive...”

While Calley appreciated the compliment, he did not appreciate the looming threat of watery drowning. Yes, he was a lobster. No, that did not make him a sudden fan of aquatic living. It only burned a little to breathe. He was just fine. In fact, all of his legs were peddling with frenetic happiness—see? This was what a happy, healthy lobster looks like. A happy, healthy, terrestrial lobster. As the tank continued its approach, Calley found his tail curling against his abdomen curling against his carapace. His antennae began to wibble.

Happy happy healthy joyful lobsters cannot hysterically laugh, but they can clack their claws shut around tufts of a fourteen year old’s pajama shirt, and stare up at her with soulful black eye beads.

And they can wish very very much to be any other form.

And they can realize that the shirt they’re clutching is suddenly, inexplicably, alarmingly empty.

Then they can fall a few short feet to the ground, and feel their tasty innards warming with gratitude for the simple things in life. Like tough exoskeletons, and not landing in tanks on the way down.

Meowed questions and mroowed accusations were met with defensively raised claws. The crustacean deferred responsibility: this was not his power. Despite all surface similarities—the animal shifting, for instance, and the fact that the cat before him looked suspiciously like a certain form of his own—he remained resolute in his innocence. He could only shift himself(ves).

No; for this, the crustacean could claim no responsibility. Clearly, this was some illusion. In which case: he did not appreciate being dropped.

With insulted pride, the mighty sea warrior gathered his eight legs (two of them held stiffly aloft), and paraded himself in a tack-clacking circle around the littler-than-usual illusionist. His inspection was carried out from all angles. Hindquarters were wiggled at with long antennae; a tail tip was brushed over by three pairs of high-stepping legs. Finally, facing front and center again, he gave a deadpan lobster stare. This was not funny. Just because his black eye beads could find no flaws in the illusion did not change one simple fact: she was poking fun at him. And she’d dropped him.

With this fact in mind, the lobster reached out a claw towards her face, aiming to pluck off an illusive whisker. With great justice.

Delicate work. Delicate, delicate, delicate work. Three doors down the hall, Jack was putting the final touches on his ship-in-a-bottle. The fifteen year old insomniac lay sprawled on the floor, the Digimon theme song—season one, English dubbed, thank you—humming in his studio-grade headphones as he worked to delicately, delicately raise the ship’s white sails.

Concentration.
Concentration was knife tip, catching a soap bubble.
Concentration was a pebble that held back the landslide.
Concentration was what stood between her bedroom and utter annihilation.

For Jebra Winslow, the importance of concentration could not be overstated. That was why she practiced in the small hours of the morning, when the local mongrels weren’t yet being lured out of their doors by the smell of breakfast cooking; when all the philandering red monkey tailed men were safely abed, with or without their expanding harem.

Her bare foot slid across the floor. Her hips swayed to the side. The coins on her loose belt jangled. Jebra Winslow danced, and the candle flames scattered around the room rose up in serpentine lines, dancing with her, two doors down.

One door down, Nikolai was hacking into the Russian satellite system. Because he could. Because they had made the mistake of putting up enough barriers to attract his attention, but not enough to keep him out. White text scrolled across the black screen in front of him. The computer’s cords ran not to the wall, but directly into his arms. His fingers twitched now and then, as if in pantomime of a keyboard stroll. This was no delicate work; this was no feat of grave concentration. For a genius such as Nikolai, this was simply—

a thousand seagull beaks held by a thousand green-eyed men being ground against a thousand chalkboards in nine hundred and nine-nine screaming throats

Jebra Winslow tripped, and fell flat on her face. Thirty fiery serpents ran rampant over her walls, her carpets, her pillow case, and her newly replaced Johnny Have-My-Babies Depp posters. One of them curled around an air duct cover, then plunged straight through into Jack’s room, where the boy yelpingly pulled his hands away from the flames. A white flickering tongue tasted the air. Its head turned towards the bottle held in its coils.

“No,” the boy said. “No, no, no—“

The resulting EMP blast did nothing to stop the snake from lovingly setting the little ship ablaze, but it did wonders to knock out every electrical appliance within twenty feet. The lights above his head flickered erratically and died.

Down the hall, Nikolai found himself on the floor. He was not quite sure how he’d gotten there. His computer sat on the desk above, thoroughly dead. From the room next door, he heard a clacking, clawing clatter. The scrawny teenager pushed his way to a more vertically dignified position, and removed the computer cords from his arms. Then he groggily limped out his bedroom door, and glared down the hall at Jack, who stood standing with a bottled fire serpent in one hand and a fierce scowl aimed at Jebra Winslow.

“Don’t look at me,” the belly dancer growled. She jerked a well-used fire extinguisher off the wall, and turned it on the snakes slithering out of her smoke-enshrouded room.

Three doors down from Jack, two down from Jebra, and right next to Nikolai, the door to Caleb Swartz’ room shuddered in its frame with a clack-clack-scrape. Nikolai tentatively reached out a hand, and opened the door.

Firelight gleamed off of proudly raised claws as they back haltingly out the door, and burned in the eyes of a white queen tom with tabby spots here and there. Through smoke and fire snakes, under the dim bulbs of the emergency lights, the epic battle spilled out into the hall.

Three teenagers paused a moment to contemplate this scene.

“Five dollars on the lobster,” Jack decided.

“Five on the kitten,” the technopath countered.

Jebra just growled, and turned her battle back on her own slithery foes.